Welcome to Ordinary Mac User!
I've been using a Mac for... I think... about three years now. I use a Mac because I got tired of putting up with system crashes, spyware, and viruses on Windows systems, and an especially bad experience with a new Windows laptop. It's not that I didn't know how to keep a Windows system running - I was a Windows and Novell SysAdmin for a Fortune 100 company. But when I started writing professionally, I wanted a computer system that "just worked", and the Mac, once they got OSX shipped and stable (around OSX 10.3 when I bought my first Mac) was just that. Steven Roberts, who was one of the long-time Mac users I asked for advice said it well - "This thing is just an appliance". (That's high praise, when describing a computer.)
I need to make one major point clear - I'm not a rabid Apple / Mac fan. I'm not a cheerleader for Apple or especially "the Apple way of life". I don't live and breathe Apple (but I do confess to watching the Steve Jobs product introductions with a sense of anticipation for "the cool new stuff".) I'm also not a "Microsoft Hater" that uses Apple product as an "anti-Microsoft" statement. That said, I don't think very highly of Microsoft's business practices as company that has a conviction as a Monopolist on their record. I also don't think very highly of Windows systems to date suffering from "accumulated cruft and bloat" from too-numerous-to-count inline updates, vulnerability to viruses and spyware. Windows Vista looks way too complicated (and a bit underwhelming for lack of features that have been promised), but it's at least a more secure Windows based on current technology, not the creaky technology that Windows XP was based on. In a few years, as new generations of cheap computers catch up with Vista's requirements (as they always do), Vista looks pretty promising.
I use, and enjoy using a computer to get my work (writing) done, and my tool / computer of choice, all things considered, at the moment, is a Mac.
But the first hurdle you have to get over when converting from Windows is that the Mac is different. It's familiar enough - just barely, but it's definitely not the same.
The second hurdle you face is in making your Mac useful enough. That requires third-party software, and there's a lot of it out there - some good, some bad. I'm generally a minimalist when it comes to adding third-party software, preferring not to "complicate" things unnecessarily. That philosophy comes in handy when your goal is having a stable, reliable computer system to get work done.
Here in Ordinary Mac User, I'll describe what works for me, what doesn't work for me, future products I'd like to see, and lots more, all from the perspective of an ordinary Mac user.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
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